Comment On Pop-up Potpourri: June Bugs

Oooh, I love these!

I like the one about the KDE Print System.

Yeah, I'd sure like to know why!

Quoth Alex:

Hugo Kornelis decided to uninstall HP Share-To-Web, which was
some mystery program that must have installed with the printer driver.
It didn't seem to like that too much ...

It's 2006, people.  If you can't write a Unicode-Aware application, your code will end up here.

Sincerely,

Mr. Antonov

Alex Papadimoulis:

Wow...  that's...  monolith-ic.

Must have been using the Date calculation from The Trouble with Blind Dates

Alex Papadimoulis:

Peter Rutner got this rather curious message when trying to save over a configuration file ...

 

All your configs are belong to us!

At least the file size is only off by two bits:

9570149222628417 dec = 22000000DCBC41 hex
DCBC41 hex = 14466113 dec

I wonder whether the date bug is due to century or time zone or both.

Anonymous:

Must have been using the Date calculation from The Trouble with Blind Dates

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

Alex Papadimoulis:

Peter Rutner got this rather curious message when trying to save over a configuration file ...

 

 

Resistance be futile 

uh no, 12:58:39 PM is before 1:00 PM.

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Alex Papadimoulis:

Peter Rutner got this rather curious message when trying to save over a configuration file ...

 

I am gatekeeper.  Are you keymaster?

ParkinT:

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

ParkinT, this is my friend 12:59 PM.  I think you might know his other name: 1 minute to 1 PM.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

ParkinT:

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

Are you daft? 12 PM = Noon. 12 AM = Midnight.

1 PM is after 12 PM.

Hehe, that's classic.

"You may want to find out why."

I'm going to start using that in all my error messages:

"Could not save file mystuff.txt. You may want to find out why."

"Email address is not in the correct format. You may want to find out why."

"MyProgram.exe encountered an error and could not continue. You may want to find out why, but you can't."

ParkinT:

Anonymous:

Must have been using the Date calculation from The Trouble with Blind Dates

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

The WTF WTFer got WTF'ed?

and it's not getting better: see this

Otto:

ParkinT:

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

Are you daft? 12 PM = Noon. 12 AM = Midnight.

1 PM is after 12 PM.

You, sir, are the daft one.  For it is obvious to all but the most untrained eye that the error message is clearly referring to 4/19/1306 1:00:00 PM and 4/19/1706 12:58:39 PM.


CAPTCHA: knowhutimean

Anonymous:

ParkinT:

Anonymous:

Must have been using the Date calculation from The Trouble with Blind Dates

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

The WTF WTFer got WTF'ed?

The WTF is that some people still don't use the 24-hour clock.

Ambiguity at noon and midnight

The actual meaning of the terms ante meridiem (before noon) and post meridiem (after noon) are obviously not applicable at exactly noon or midnight.

However, it has become common practice in countries that use the
system (such as the United States) to designate noon as 12:00 p.m and
midnight as 12:00 a.m. The practical advantage of this convention
becomes clear when one considers a digital clock . Noon and midnight
are only infinitesimal points in time, and therefore it is not
practical to use any other convention than that which also applies
immediately afterwards, when the clock still displays 12:00. This
convention is standardized for computer usage in American National
Standard ANSI INCITS 310 (which extends the international standard ISO 8601 time notation with a 12-h a.m./p.m. variant for the U.S.-market).

Many U.S. style guides (including the NIST
website) recommend instead that it is clearest if one refers to "noon"
or "12:00 noon" and "midnight" or "12:00 midnight" (rather than to
12:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m., respectively). Some other style guides
suggest "12:00 n" for noon and "12:00 m" for midnight, but this conflicts with the older tradition of using "12:00 m" for noon (Latin meridies), and "12:00 mn" for midnight (media nox).

Even with all these conventions, references to midnight remain
problematic, because they do not distinguish between the midnight at
the start of the day referenced and the midnight at its end. Therefore,
some U.S. style guides recommend to either provide other context clues,
or to avoid references to midnight entirely, for example in favour of
11:59 p.m. for the end of the day and 00:01 a.m. for the start of the
day. The latter has become common practice in the United States in
legal contracts and for airplane, bus, or train schedules.

The 24-hour clock notation avoids all of these ambiguities by using 00:00, 12:00, and 24:00.

The Kflickr dialog makes a lot more sense when icons are enabled on pushbuttons:

http://kflickr.sourceforge.net/wikka.php?wakka=Screen

OtherMichael:

The 24-hour clock notation avoids all of these ambiguities by using 00:00, 12:00, and 24:00.

Yup, nothing ambiguous about 00:00 and 24:00.

OtherMichael:

Ambiguity at noon and midnight

...The 24-hour clock notation avoids all of these ambiguities by using 00:00, 12:00, and 24:00.

 

The WTF there is that 00:00 is 24:00, yet it avoids ambiguities!

R.Flowers:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Peter Rutner got this rather curious message when trying to save over a configuration file ...

 

All your configs are belong to us!

That is sad ... i mean '.sad'

Me fail English, unpossible!

uh oh... i have never actually seen something like 24:00 or 12:01pm ... the clock switches always directly to 00:00... same like there's no 12:34:60 ...

I'm stating obvious here but I feel like I have to

Alex Papadimoulis:

 

I've got the same CD and the ticks and crosses are the other way around. I smell photoshop.

OtherMichael:

Even with all these conventions, references to midnight remain
problematic, because they do not distinguish between the midnight at
the start of the day referenced and the midnight at its end.

In fact, isn't that how Blockbuster video makes most of their money? They tell you, "This movie is due back by Midnight Sunday." Then you find out that they meant 00:00 Sunday, and not 23:59 + 1 minute Sunday and you end up with a late fee.

24:00 is actually invalid so there are no ambiguities at all. 24h clock goes from 00:00 to 23:59

Anonymous:

OtherMichael:

Ambiguity at noon and midnight

...The 24-hour clock notation avoids all of these ambiguities by using 00:00, 12:00, and 24:00.

The WTF there is that 00:00 is 24:00, yet it avoids ambiguities!

Which is perfectly unambiguous. 00:00 refers to today, and 24:00 refers to tomorrow.

Unless you're reading this tomorrow, in which case .... oh, nevermind. You get the idea.

Anonymous:

The Kflickr dialog makes a lot more sense when icons are enabled on pushbuttons:

http://kflickr.sourceforge.net/wikka.php?wakka=Screen

No it doesn't. What's the difference between "OK (Down Arrow)", "OK," and "OK (Up Arrow)?" That's still confusing as hell.

There is no WTF. 24:00 is precisely 24 hours after 0:00. They are both midnight, but are by no means both the same time in the context of a certain day. Saying one "is" (equal to) the other is more than just a little stretch of the truth.

Alex Papadimoulis:

Hell, I just want that hard disk. What I could do with 8.5 petabytes...

So is Tuesday, 24:00 midnight tuesday morning or midnight tuesday evening?  If you're going to use that sort of annotation, might as well also say things like "Want to go to lunch Wednesday at 36:30?"  00:00:00 to 23:59:59 is clear.  Anothing greater (or less) than that starts the confusion timescale...

dcardani:

Anonymous:

The Kflickr dialog makes a lot more sense when icons are enabled on pushbuttons:

http://kflickr.sourceforge.net/wikka.php?wakka=Screen

No it doesn't. What's the difference between "OK (Down Arrow)", "OK," and "OK (Up Arrow)?" That's still confusing as hell.

So it's supposed to have 3 ok buttons? that's re-retarded.

looks like a cheeze way of doing next and prev buttons...

 

captcha > null

Welcome to the magic of sparse files!  That's why I could create a 16 meg file on an Apple 2c on a 140K floppy using Apple ProDOS, and why (I think they enabled it on XP) under NTFS you can create friggin' huge files on NTFS, and I'm not sure which other filesystems allow/support them.

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

ParkinT:

Anonymous:

Must have been using the Date calculation from The Trouble with Blind Dates

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

The WTF WTFer got WTF'ed?

The WTF is that some people still don't use the 24-hour clock.

The WTF is that some people still don't use ISO dates...

nsimeonov:

24:00 is actually invalid so there are no ambiguities at all. 24h clock goes from 00:00 to 23:59

Well, criminy, that's even more confusing! Wouldn't it be better if it went from 00:00 to 00:01, then from 00:01 to 00:02, then ...

Oh, wait.

Never mind ...

Anonymous:

So is Tuesday, 24:00 midnight tuesday morning or midnight tuesday evening?  If you're going to use that sort of annotation, might as well also say things like "Want to go to lunch Wednesday at 36:30?"  00:00:00 to 23:59:59 is clear.  Anothing greater (or less) than that starts the confusion timescale...

Wednesday at 36:30 = File Not Found

Gene Wirchenko:

ParkinT:

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

ParkinT, this is my friend 12:59 PM.  I think you might know his other name: 1 minute to 1 PM.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko

In the interest of self-deprication, I have to admit that I was thinking the same thing as ParkinT.  Look at it over and over and scratching my head.

I probably would have made the post myself if it hadn't been done before I got here today.

(Not excusing the mistake, just admiting that I'm a doofus too sometimes.)

rbriem:

nsimeonov:

24:00 is actually invalid so there are no ambiguities at all. 24h clock goes from 00:00 to 23:59

Well, criminy, that's even more confusing! Wouldn't it be better if it went from 00:00 to 00:01, then from 00:01 to 00:02, then ...

Oh, wait.

Never mind ...

<Laugh> That's fricken funny, man.  Now THAT's my kind of humor.  (Bonus for using the word "criminy".  Perfect.)

alias:

I've got the same CD and the ticks and crosses are the other way around. I smell photoshop.

Not impossible, but this could very well be genuine. I have myself witnessed the horrified expression of a PR manager who has just been confronted with a similar (but even worse) gaffe in something that was just released, and who has just realised that it is going to be a very long and embarrassing day getting a new version ready.

nsimeonov:

24:00 is actually invalid so there are no ambiguities at all. 24h clock goes from 00:00 to 23:59

And just to head off anyone that tries to make the argument (if anyone were to try to do so) , 24:00 still isn't valid even when a Leap Second is declared.  In that case the clock goes from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 to 00:00:00.

(Just wanting to throw out trivia.)

Anonymous:

Welcome to the magic of sparse files!  That's why I could create a 16 meg file on an Apple 2c on a 140K floppy using Apple ProDOS, and why (I think they enabled it on XP) under NTFS you can create friggin' huge files on NTFS, and I'm not sure which other filesystems allow/support them.

CP/M allowed them.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

marvin_rabbit:

Gene Wirchenko:

ParkinT:

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

ParkinT, this is my friend 12:59 PM.  I think you might know his other name: 1 minute to 1 PM.

In the interest of self-deprication, I have to admit that I was thinking the same thing as ParkinT.  Look at it over and over and scratching my head.

I probably would have made the post myself if it hadn't been done before I got here today.

(Not excusing the mistake, just admiting that I'm a doofus too sometimes.)

Admitting it is most of the battle.  Clueless people who insist they know even after being whacked with a clue-by-four . . . well, you can fill the rest in, right?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

ParkinT:

Anonymous:

Must have been using the Date calculation from The Trouble with Blind Dates

Hoooold on there Bobalouie!

1:00PM IS earlier than 12:59PM

There is nothing wrong there!

No its not!  1:00 pm comes 2 minutes after 12:58 pm.  Or in this particular case, 1 minute and 21 seconds.

    -dZ.

Just sad that MS-DOS and then NT didn't support them until rather recently, really: imagine how much actual disk space could have been saved when using databases all these years!  Wait, perhaps Microsoft was merely doing the hard drive manufacturers a huge favor, never mind...

 

Gene Wirchenko:

Anonymous:

Welcome to the magic of sparse files!  That's why I could create a 16 meg file on an Apple 2c on a 140K floppy using Apple ProDOS, and why (I think they enabled it on XP) under NTFS you can create friggin' huge files on NTFS, and I'm not sure which other filesystems allow/support them.

CP/M allowed them.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Anonymous:

OtherMichael:

Ambiguity at noon and midnight

...The 24-hour clock notation avoids all of these ambiguities by using 00:00, 12:00, and 24:00.

 

The WTF there is that 00:00 is 24:00, yet it avoids ambiguities!

It avoid the ambiguities between the midnight at the beginning of the day and the midnight at the end of the day -- there is a difference, depending on your point of view.

marvin_rabbit:

nsimeonov:

24:00 is actually invalid so there are no ambiguities at all. 24h clock goes from 00:00 to 23:59

And just to head off anyone that tries to make the argument (if anyone were to try to do so) , 24:00 still isn't valid even when a Leap Second is declared.  In that case the clock goes from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 to 00:00:00.

(Just wanting to throw out trivia.)

OK, I'll bite.  First, a link to the Wikipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_clock#Midnight_00:00_and_24:00

I only offer that to make it easier for anybody to find and read it, as I don't trust Wikipedia, so here's another resource with the same:

    http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Now, how about a more "official" page, say, an IBM reference on locales:

    http://www-306.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/locales/date_time.jsp

Here's a brief excerpt from that page:

In the ISO/IEC twenty-four-hour system, 24:00 is midnight at the end of
a day, and 00:01 is one minute after midnight of the next day. The
sequence is 23:59, 24:00, 00:01. In ISO/IEC standard 8601, both 24:00
and 00:00 are allowed to indicate midnight, with 24:00 indicating the
end of the day and 00:00 indicating the start of the next day.

(emphasis mine.)

Did you even look it up, or did you just *thought* that it was invalid, and therefore assumed it must be so?

     -dZ.

Jonathan Thompson:

Welcome to the magic of sparse files!  That's why I could create a 16 meg file on an Apple 2c on a 140K floppy using Apple ProDOS, and why (I think they enabled it on XP) under NTFS you can create friggin' huge files on NTFS, and I'm not sure which other filesystems allow/support them.

"Welcome to All Things Scottish ... We've got three sizes:  Wee, Not-so-wee and FRIGGIN' HUGE!"

Wow, I'm quoting SNL.  It's late and I'm tired; two more hours and my body can join my brain, somewhere away from my desk.